The health of migrants passing through Serbia: The threat of the sick “other”?

Abstract

With the gaining influence of securitarian discourses, migrants in Serbia are increasingly presented as a threat to the health of the general population. The media and local authorities often present them as carriers of contagious diseases and use their poor health condition as a justification for repressive measures against them. But are the public concern and (an almost exclusive) focus on the ways the health of migrants influences public health really appropriate? Have migrants been a threat to the health of the general population? In this article, I present some observations from seven months of participant observation I conducted in Serbia as a Persian and French translator during medical consultations for migrants (both in a center for asylum seekers and in the setting of the medical humanitarian organization providing primary healthcare to illegalized migrants). The attention to ethnographic data reveals that migrants have not been the carriers of diseases “from far away”, which would endanger the population, but that rather their health problems stem from the risk environment and conditions of structural violence they find themselves in.

Keywords

• migrant health
• myth of the contagious migrant
• securitarisation of migration
• structural violence
• risk environment
• Serbia